Critical Essay by Marc Redfield

In the following essay, Redfield studies the concept of Bildung and the paradoxes of literary Bildung, maintaining that the complications of the Bildungsroman genre stem from its aesthetic ideology.

For the being of Geist has an essential connection with the idea of Bildung.

—Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method

Among the challenges the modern novel offers to genre theory, that of the Bildungsroman is remarkable on several counts. Few literary terms—let alone German ones—have enjoyed greater international success, both in the academy and in high culture generally. “If a person interested in literary matters commands as many as a dozen words of German,” Jeffrey Sammons remarks...